Night One
It was midnight last Wednesday. We were wrenched out of deep sleep by sudden, horrible screaming. "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!", Lyle screamed in a really unusual, horrifying way. Matt tore off downstairs. Seconds later it changed to, "Mommy! Mommy!" and I followed. But by the time I got down to the kids' level, Matt was leaving their room, shaking his head. "It's not him," he said.
It wasn't Lyle.
This had happened before. We are in a condo building where three other young children live. If our monitor is on the wrong channel, we pick up the signal from one of them in the middle of the night and get scared shitless for no reason whatsoever. Hearts pounding, grateful that Lyle was fine, we finally went back to sleep.
Night Two
It was 11 pm. I picked up the monitor. "Is this on the right channel for sure?" I asked Matt, who was already in bed. "Yeah, we changed it after last night," he replied. I felt uncertain. The loud static wasn't exactly the same as its usual loud static. I switched it back and forth to demonstrate this. But he insisted. And we were both so tired that we decided it had to be fine and was not worth testing. After all, the kids so rarely wake up during the night and our sleep was disturbed last night - we were sure to be fine even if it wasn't fixed (you see where this is going, don't you?). So off we went to la-la land.
Until 1 am. Never have I been jarred from sleep in this way. In my life. I pulled myself out of an intense dream (I recall pushing people out of the way in my dream in order to get myself up to the surface of consciousness), only to start screaming. Loudly. I was screaming because Matt was screaming. Matt was screaming because, from somewhere else in the house, both of the boys were screaming. At the top of their lungs. As if the house were on fire. That is truly what I believed (in my semi-consciousness) must have been happening. We could hear someone pounding up the stairs towards us, screaming and crying. I fought my way off of our bed, not even aware of my screaming, and pushed towards the doorway, where Matt had stopped to meet Baxter. Matt turned to me in half-asleep anger, and hollered, "WHY ARE YOU STILL SHOUTING?" Trying to catch my breath, I shouted, "WHERE'S LYLE?? WHAT'S GOING ON?"
Matt could see that Lyle was running up the stairs screaming and crying behind Baxter, but I couldn't, being trapped in the bedroom and all. Once all four of us were in each other's arms in the doorway, it became abundantly clear that all of us had been hollering at the very top of our lungs together.
"I had an earache," cried Baxter.
Um, an earache?! You mean the house is neither on fire nor full of armed militiamen?
"I was calling for you and calling for you," he started wailing, "and you didn't come! And then Lyle woke up and he was calling for you, too. When I came upstairs to find you, he got scared and upset and started to scream and chased me. I was so scared that I started running and screaming, too!" We were all shaking.
Holy Mary Mother of God, you have no idea what it sounded like. If not for the storm we were stuck in last summer in Michigan, this would have been my scariest parenting moment ever. We took the kids into bed with us and held them tight for the rest of the night. It took some of us many hours to fall asleep again.
Enter: a new monitor. One that not only does NOT pick up any neighbors' children but has no static whatsoever. It is clear as a bell. And only one channel that only connects to my own children's room! Imagine! I could go on and on about this monitor but I'm sure many of my readers have no use for one anymore. Just know that if you do need one, or know anyone who does, this Safety 1st High-Def Digital Monitor is truly amazing and you can read all about it here. It also looks damn cool, like something from the Apple store, which you know will always make us happy. We have always leaned towards the $19.99 baby monitors, but this time no price was too steep to guarantee that we would always hear our kids - and only our kids - during the night.
We're all sleeping better now.
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11 comments:
I'm totally getting this for Shaggy. We have a crappy Fisher-Price one now that is always so static-y, and when we lived in the city center we always picked up the ambulance calls.
Thanks for the info! I put it on my Amazon Wish List already.
Hysterical post. Seriously. Spit coffee all over the keyboard, I was laughing so hard.
No amount of money is too much money to spend on a good night's sleep. I'm so glad you found such a handy solution to the paranoia--the running, the screaming, the up and the down. I would have been a basket case.
Thank you for such a timely post! We are in the market for a new baby monitor, and I wasn't sure what to get.
Excellent post!! Lol!
I was laughing too, but first I was scared to death with you. We have had similar night awakenings and could probably do with a new monitor. Thanks for the recommendation :)
OMG, Jordan! I didn't know whether I wanted to laugh or cry. So, I'm crying with relief right now b/c I know that panic all too well.
I am going to keep this info for the time we need to replace our current monitor (fairly new). When we lived in CA, I was able to pick up my neighbors' cordless phone calls. On one side was a couple going through a **nasty** divorce (she was caught in flagrante delicto!) and on the other was a sweet little old lady from Burma. We used to joke about Nik learning to speak Burmese before he spoke English!
The night Anya's eardrum ruptured, she screamed like nothing I've ever heard before in my life, and hope to never hear again. We didn't need the monitor that night - she woke us up just fine on her own.
Christ on a cracker. Scary.
And funny.
I still miss the make-up posts.
Oh my. This was starting to sound like some sort of Blair Witchy movie come to life. We had that wrong station experience once too...but it was much, much more mundane...just a conversation. A. Really. Dull. One. In our bedroom. Couldn't make it go away. But I wouldn't trade that for a panic like yours.
Sleep tight.
PS My security word is ffgpddwm. Is that Welsh?
This is the best MM post ever.
Wow. We're on our second pair of cheapie Fisher-Prices, after the first pair (an old one we've had for J and a newer one for G) died at the same time over Christmas. God, I hate them. That staticky roar will haunt me to my grave. But yes, pretty damn handy when they work well! This one sounds like a good investment if we ever need another...
(I was glad to see that you're still monitoring Baxter - by default since they share a room, or would you have a monitor for Baxter even if they were in different rooms?)
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